PHP & Possessive Punctuation

Discussion

1. Timothy

   Nice func. Will save me some time. Makes me wonder why I didn’t think of this.
2. saiful

   @Timothy becoz you are not as intelligent as David and also not a good programmer as him.
3. Charles

   “Chris’s” is not correct

   Actually, it would be correct: http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk.html#1
4. feedbacker

   @Charles: In a word….rubbish.
5. Derrick

   Chris’s is proper English, and Chris’, although an acceptable alternative, is still technically improper and most sources will advise you to use the former. The rule is that any singular possessive noun ends in ‘s, regardless of whether or not the non-possessive form ends in an s.

   See the following (or just Google it):

   http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/621/01/

   http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp

   http://www.englishclub.com/esl-articles/possessive-apostrophe.htm
6. Chris the Developer

   What about plural possession?

   The belongings of the people, or the peoples’ belongings.
   Often gibbs of wood have rough edges. Wood gibbs’ edges are often rough.
7. David Walsh

   @Chris the Developer: That’s a bit out of scope for this function.
8. David Walsh

   @Derrick: That goes against everything I’ve ever been taught (and I got A’s in every English class I’ve taken since 5th grade.) I wonder if we teach it different in the US.
9. Valerie

   Another U.S. professional editor here, and I use primarily the Chicago Manual of Style, which is a standard reference. It says the same: that Chris’s would be correct. See section 7.17 on possessives. The funny part in that section is this: “Since feelings on these matters sometimes run high, users of this manual may wish to modify or add to the exceptions.”

   Maybe your teachers all had “high” feelings:)

   See http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org
10. Valerie

    Just wanted to add that it’s a cool tip, though, and I read your blog every day…
11. Jeremy Parrish

    @David Walsh: I don’t know what kind of school you went to… that’s not what I learned. In my book, “Chris’s” is correct. Also, the plural form of “A” is “As”, not “A’s”.

    @Chris the Developer: The plural possessive of people is “people’s”. You chose a tricky example since people is an irregular pluralization. However, in general, you are correct that the apostrophe comes after the “s” in plural possessives (e.g. teachers’ belongings).
12. David Walsh

    The rule I was always taught was that if the name/object ended in an “s”, you put ONLY an apostrophe after the word. I’ll be right back — I’m going to go sue my old school district.
13. Ryan Rampersad

    David, my school district said the same thing!

    This is pretty clever. I’ve only made helper functions for pluralizing a word.
14. James Lin

    Yea mine taught the same thing. I think it’s more of an understanding that we use that rather than a rule. If ever see a site that uses my name in plurals like this “James’s” I’m going to look at it funny.
15. Jani Peltoniemi

    Although I’m not sure, I think I was taught the same way as David was. Personally I think “…s’s” looks awkward.
16. Darkimmortal

    It might not be correct, but when working with programming terms and acronyms I always insert an apostrophe before the S. Sometimes the meaning would change without one.
17. Jam

    Uh… wouldn’t it be, like… a lot faster if you manually typed out the apostrophe?
18. David Walsh

    @Jam: Can’t do that in an automated system dogg.
19. Graham McNicoll

    I prefer using substr($string, -1) to get the last character instead of the array, strlen() method you use.
20. David

    I was taught (public school in New York) that for singular possessive, always add the ‘s.

    However, I agree it looks awkward, so I usually use the form with apostrophe only. My own little bit of arrogance.
21. Derrick

    Yeah, it does look awkward, and that’s why most sources say that it’s acceptable (although not preferable) to use just the apostrophe in those cases. It probably depends on where you’re using it, too. I’d be hesitant to use just the apostrophe on a project for a school, university, or other educational institution :)

    You can also use this:

    substr ( $string, -1 )

    in place of this:

    $string[strlen($string) – 1]

    which makes for cleaner, more readable code, in my opinion.
22. UpDeL

    Another solution using regxp :

    function properize($string) {
    return $string.(preg_match('/[s]$/', $string) ? "'" : "'s");
    }
23. marcusklaas

    Damn, I just wanted to be cool and say that substr -1 would be way awesomer, but I’ve been beated to it :(
24. Brian

    Once again, David Walsh to the rescue with a little snippet.
25. Jarik

    yet another alternative

    ...
    return $string . (str_ends_with($string, 's') ? '\'' : '\'s');
    ...